CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, October 17, 2005

by William Hamilton, Ph.D.

Total Immersion: Maintaining our heritage

Recently, the world watched (and the Sinistra Media largely ignored), the over 63-percent of Iraqis (to include Sunni Arabs) who turned out to vote for their first-ever democratic constitution. From our Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the ratification of our Constitution in 1789, consumed 13 years. Yet it only took the Iraqis 2.5 years since the fall of Saddam Hussein to get a Constitution in place. Moreover, if we in the U.S. achieve a 50-percent voter turnout, that is considered a huge success.

So, assuming the Iraqis muddle through to a workable, somewhat democratic government and a good portion of our troops can be deployed elsewhere to hunt down the Islamo-fascists, what other major challenges do we face?

First, the Cindy Sheehan/Sinistra Media crowd who are desperate for us to lose in Iraq and elsewhere. Did anyone notice Cindy turned the care of her infant son over to relatives in order to free up her time for her work as an anti-capitalism activist?. Presumably, she remembered his name during her two personal meetings with President Bush.

Our second challenge is what some call: the “Browning of America.” Mind you, this is a challenge, not a threat. Just do the numbers. More people of color want to come here to share our free society than there are Anglo-Saxons and other Whites in residence or likely to be born. By the year 2050, the “browning” is inevitable. So how do we do a proper job of dealing with the inevitable?

First, the language issue: If representative, constitutional democracy is to survive, then the Anglo-Saxon heritage that fostered representative, constitutional democracy must survive as well. If you read Sir Winston Churchill’s four-volume: A History of the English Speaking Peoples, you get a sense of why this is so. English is a language central to a form of government that began with the Greeks. And, I might add, that 1/8th of English comes from Greek.

So, if we want folks in our ultimately browned America to speak English and to preserve the Greek/English heritage that invented democracy, how do we do that? Well, we sure don’t do it with Bi-lingual Education. We do that by insisting on the only language-learning method that works: Total Immersion.

Let’s have a show of hands of readers out there who have taken Spanish, German, French or whatever in high school and/or college. I see quite a few. Now, let’s have a show of hands of those who can hold a conversation in the language you studied. Not just able to get directions to the toilet, but to hold actual, back-and-forth conversations. Hmmn, I don’t see many hands. Maybe, one or two.

That’s because Bi-lingual Education usually fails. By contrast, Total Immersion almost always works because the easy way to learn a foreign language is to be thrust into an environment where only that language is spoken, where all the directional signs, all the advertisements, all the newspapers and magazines, all the radio and TV shows, are in that language.

Let’s say your cradle language is Spanish, and you are living in an English-speaking environment. In that case, you have automatically been given the gift of English Total Immersion.

While some well-meaning people think Bi-lingual Education is an act of kindness, let’s ask the question: Which American political party benefits when Hispanics or other immigrants fail to learn English?

According to a recent study published by Third Way -- a new Democrat advocacy think tank – Democrats are believing in a myth when they think population growth among Hispanics will bring about and maintain a Democrat majority. The study says a dramatic rise in Hispanic incomes means these newly affluent voters will behave like the rest of middle-class Americans, and are then more likely to vote Republican.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist, a featured commentator for USA Today and self-described “recovering lawyer and philosopher,” is the co-author of The Grand Conspiracy and The Panama Conspiracy – two thrillers about terrorism directed against the United States.